Mariners setting sail under stormy skies and equipped with incomplete maps risk being blown off course or running aground on hidden shoals. Companies considering the use of carbon credits from nature as offsets in their climate mitigation strategies face similar risks, as standards and norms for such use remain unsettled.

一种new WRI paper1提供指导,以帮助公司以可靠的方式朝着雄心勃勃的企业和气候目标提供安全通道的方式导航不断变化的风和旋流电流。必威官网是真的吗下面,我们重点介绍了三个考虑因素:

1。Before using credits from so-called nature-based solutions (NBS), companies should build confidence that they are doing all that they can to abate their own emissions now and in the future.

The science is clear that we’ve run out of time and atmospheric space to trade off one source of emissions against another. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 °C确定为了避免灾难性的气候变化,我们需要大大减少从化石燃料,森林和其他土地利用变化中的化石燃料,停必威官网是真的吗止和反向排放中的排放。此外,到2050年不迟于2050年,所有残余排放都必须由去除碳的活动来自气氛。

The implication for companies is that the purchase of forest carbon and other NBS credits to offset their own value chain emissions poses both reputational and climate risks unless they are clearly additional to an aggressive decarbonization strategy. TheScience Based Targets initiative提供有关这些减排策略在近期需要外观的指导,目前正在为公司制定指导,以设定长期净零目标。此类指导将在近期使用NBS信用来平衡不断排放的公司为公司提供激励措施的程度 - 因为它们在净零目标方面取得了足够的进步 - 是积极辩论的主题。

2.公司应优先考虑高质量的NBS信用,对于基于森林的减少和拆卸,越来越多地定义为在管辖范围内的信用。2

While all sources of carbon credits face concerns about issues such as additionality, leakage, impermanence and harm to local communities, forest carbon credits have perhaps been unfairly singled out as especially risky. However, for more than a decade, principles and approaches for managing those risks have been incorporated into standards and refined in light of experience with REDD+. REDD+ is the framework for financing reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation negotiated under the UNFCCC and is included in the Paris Agreement.

To date, the voluntary market in REDD+ credits has been exclusively focused on emissions reductions and removals at the scale of individual projects, such as protection of a national park or a tree-planting scheme involving a cluster of villages. While many such projects have achieved worthy goals at the local level, they have not proven effective in addressing the drivers of deforestation at scale.Crediting REDD+ programs在整个国家或大型次级司法管辖区的规模上,有可能元帅政府规范土地使用,执行法律,实施财政激励措施和其他所需的职能,以控制只有政府才能执行的森林砍伐。在公开支持的REDD+计划下,数十个国家,州和省份投资用于建立提供高质量森林碳信用额所需的监测系统和策略。虽然只有少数人已经准备好了市场,但强烈的需求信号可以为其他人提供激励措施,以加快实现该地位所需的困难政策改革。

一种consensus is emerging that projects must be aligned within government programs and carbon accounting systems, and that jurisdictional-scale credits represent a higher standard of quality than project-based credits. For example, the缩放自愿碳市场的工作队concluded that “as many governments have begun to account for deforestation and forest degradation at the jurisdictional level, there is a need to ensure national accounting adds up, and thus for individual project-based REDD+ projects to ‘nest’ into the jurisdictional program, if possible.” Furthermore, the first international compliance regime to accept forest carbon credits — the International Civil Aviation Organization’s国际航空的碳抵消和减少计划(ICAO CORSIA) - 仅批准了司法规模的REDD+学分计划。

3.在组成NBS信用投资的投资组合时,公司应包括减少排放,从保护生态系统和碳去除量恢复它们,并在近期优先考虑其。

最近对零净排放目标做出承诺的公司的级联引起了人们的注意,需要在2050年不迟于2050年就抵消任何残余排放。不幸的是,这使许多公司专注于植树活动在短期内,即使世界继续以高甚至更高的速度摧毁现有的高碳生态系统,例如热带森林和湿地。

Carbon released into the atmosphere through such destruction is essentially irrecoverable through restoration in the relevant timeframe, not to mention the loss of valuable biodiversity and ecosystem services. While we need to both protect and restore nature for climate stability and other reasons, a focus on planting trees — which annually sequester only a tiny fraction of the carbon released in a single pulse from deforestation of a similar area — is less valuable to society’s efforts to reach net-zero emissions.

绘制课程,悬而未决的天空和平静的海洋

这些课程更正和其他导航工具将在工作文件,包括针对需求侧购买者和供应方卖家的NBS信用的环境和社会诚信的特定策略。

The paper also highlights issues that remain unresolved, such as how carbon emissions traded in voluntary international transactions will be reflected in national accounting systems under the Paris Agreement, and the various forums in which these issues are being debated. It asserts that companies should promote carbon market rules that ensure a high level of integrity, lest their credibility and legitimacy be undermined.

We hope that the urgency of putting the planet on a pathway to net-zero, combined with the imperative of mobilizing finance to protect and restore nature, will lead to rapid consensus in the run-up to the UN’s COP26 climate summit in Glasgow in November 2021. Companies are eager for a clearing of skies that remain cloudy with respect to society’s expectations for their roles in meeting both of these challenges, and a calming of rough seas of debate over what standards and norms should apply to the use of NBS credits in corporate climate mitigation strategies.

In the meantime, being clear that such credits are not a substitute for a company’s own abatement, choosing high-quality jurisdictional-scale credits, and financing both emissions reductions and removals from nature represent channel markers to ensure a safer journey toward corporate and climate goals.


  1. The Working Paper was produced in the context of WRI’s partnership with HSBC.↩︎

  2. 弗朗西斯·西摩(Frances Seymour)担任REDD+ Transactions架构的董事会主席,这是一项自愿性倡议,为司法管辖区REDD+信用提供了标准。↩︎